Ed Batista

Zooming Out and Zooming In

A theme in my work with leaders is "zooming out and zooming in." You zoom out to obtain a broader view, and you zoom in to perceive the details. You zoom out to consider alternative means of problem-solving, or whether a problem is worth your time and energy, or whether it's even a "problem" at all. You zoom in to narrow your field of vision, to focus your attention, and to make things happen.

This is easy to describe in the abstract and difficult to put into practice. It's hard to determine the right altitude in any given situation. It's hard to reach the right altitude once you've made that decision. And in the heat of the moment it can be hard to even remember that different altitudes exist. You mistakenly believe your immediate view is the only view, and you forget that you have a choice.

What helps? A starting point is reminding yourself that you do have a choice, that your current view is influenced but not dictated by situational factors, and that you have--and must exert--agency to select the altitude that will enable you to achieve your goals most effectively. In this effort haste and urgency are rarely your friends, which is one reason why the impulse to hurry should often be interpreted as a signal to slow down. [1]

But having paused to identify the right altitude, how do you get there? How do you zoom in and out as needed? There's no single step that works for everyone in all circumstances, but here are some practices to consider:

Zooming Out

Perspective

It's easy to get stuck at a low altitude when facing a challenge. Envisioning a set of circumstances other than your own and locating yourself in that environment can afford you an entirely new perspective. This is one reason to read history as well as fiction--the travails of others, real or imagined, can make your own difficulties pale in comparison. [2]

You can also transport yourself to a future when your current circumstances will likely feel less pressing or even irrelevant. Look out a week, a month, a year, a decade--what do you think your most significant concerns will be at that point in time? Read an obituary and remember that you're mortal. Or simply bear in mind that in five billion years our Sun will become a red giant and engulf the Earth entirely. [3]

Transcendence

You can be so intensely attached to your subjective experience that you operate under the illusion that you're the "center of the world." [4] This aspect of human psychology benefits the species--when the self is so highly esteemed, self-preservation is of paramount importance. But it also makes it harder to transcend the self, to reach outside and beyond yourself in order to connect with something larger. [5]

All spiritual traditions offer a path to transcendence, which is one of the most important functions of a belief structure. [6] Time in nature and exposure to meaningful works of art can also trigger a sense of awe and wonder. But don't wait for a special occasion, such as a holy day, or a museum visit, or a trip to the Grand Canyon. There is magic in the mundane, when we're willing to see it.

Humility

Faced with a given situation, you rapidly construct an "explanatory narrative"--a story that you rely upon to make sense of what's happening and take appropriate action in response. Under most circumstances, your narratives are sufficiently accurate to enable you to make good choices, but not always. This isn't a character flaw--it's a predictable cognitive bias.

When you're feeling stuck at a low altitude, it's helpful to adopt a stance that philosophers describe as "epistemic humility," a heightened awareness of the limitations of one's knowledge. More specifically, remember that your explanatory narrative at any given moment is based on incomplete data, and there's almost certainly more to the story. [7]

 

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Zooming In

Feelings

This refers both to emotions and to literal feelings--the physiological sensations that often precede or accompany your conscious awareness of an emotional state. Feelings aren't always accurate or justified, of course, and in some circumstances they're reliably "noisy signals." But being more attuned to your emotions can help you determine what merits your attention in a given situation and reach the appropriate altitude.

To be very clear, emotions are not unerring guides to right action, but they serve as "discriminant hedonic amplifiers," in psychologist Victor Johnston's phrase, enabling us to identify potential opportunities and threats while filtering out less relevant data. [8] The key is cultivating a capacity for emotion regulation, improving your ability to sense, comprehend, articulate and express what you're feeling. [9]

Focus

To achieve their intended purpose, emotions act as "attention magnets" by interrupting conscious thought and making it difficult to think of anything else. [10] This is a "feature" for the species that contributed to our ancestors' survival, but as individuals we often experience it as a "bug." Having leveraged your feelings to drop down to the right altitude, the next step is filtering out distractions in order to stay there.

This entails the ability to focus for sustained periods of time. You can enhance your capacity for focused thought by pursuing a mindfulness practice, among other techniques. [11] But it's equally important to observe your working environment, identify sources of distraction, and mitigate them, even if just on a temporary basis. [12]

Progress

As the great management thinker Peter Drucker noted, "Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things." [13] Zooming out helps you identify "the right things," while zooming in helps you "do things right." But particularly when you're in a leadership role, zooming in is a costly expenditure of attention, so it's essential to ensure that your time spent at this altitude is productive.

A dilemma is that you may confuse motion with progress, particularly if you're a new leader who was only recently an individual contributor, or if you're leading at scale (or leading leaders) for the first time. [14] Early in your career, or in the initial stages of your company's development, there may have been little difference between motion and progress--you just needed to get busy and keep at it. But eventually progress isn't measured by how many fires you put out, but by how many smoke detectors you've installed. [15]

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Importance of Slowing Down

[2] For example, in Two Years Before the Mast (1840), Richard Henry Dana recounts his time at sea as a common sailor in the 1830s. On a voyage from California to Boston they rounded Cape Horn during the coldest months of the year, and Dana and his fellow seamen had to climb the rigging in the middle of freezing storms to furl the sails:

When we got upon the yard, my hands were so numb that I could not have cast off the knot of the gasket to save my life. We both lay over the yard for a few seconds, beating our hands upon the sail, until we started the blood into our fingers' ends... Mittens, too, we wore on deck, but it would not do to go aloft with them on, for it was impossible to work with them, and, being wet and stiff, they might let a man slip overboard, for all the hold he could get upon a rope; so, we were obliged to work with bare hands, which, as well as our faces, were often cut with the hail-stones, which fell thick and large. [pages 284, 290]

Or consider The Naked and the Dead (1948) Norman Mailer's novel about a island campaign in the Pacific theater during World War II, a story informed by Mailer's own experiences as an Army private. At one point a platoon is tasked with wheeling a set of artillery guns through the jungle by hand at night:

They had reached that state of fatigue in which everything was hated. A man would slip in the mud and remain there, breathing hoarsely, having no will to get to his feet. That part of the column would halt, and wait numbly for the soldier to join them... And they would labor forward a few more yards and halt. In the darkness, distance had no meaning, nor did time. The heat had left their bodies; they shivered and trembled in the damp night, and everything about them was sodden and pappy; they stank, but no longer with animal smells; their clothing was plastered with the foul muck of the jungle mud... [pages 138-39]

[3] Why the Sun Won't Become a Black Hole (Sara Frazier, NASA, 2019)

[4] We're Not the Center of the World (But We Think We Are)

[5] My favorite resource on transcendence is Character Strengths and Virtues, the 2004 volume by psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman that encompasses the research underlying the Values in Action Survey of Character Strengths. (See chapters 23-27.) In the VIA framework the overarching virtue of transcendence can be achieved through many different paths: appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, humor and spirituality:

At first glance, our final grouping of character strengths seems mixed, but the common theme running through these strengths of transcendence is that each allows individuals to forge connections to the larger universe and thereby provide meaning to their lives. Almost all of the positive traits in our classification reach outside the individual--character, after all, is social in nature--but in the case of the transcendence strengths, the reaching goes beyond other people per se to embrace all or part of the larger universe. [page 519]

[6] "A compelling reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship...is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things...then you will never have enough... Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly... Worship power--you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart--you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful--it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings... And the so-called 'real world' will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the so-called 'real world' of men and money and power hums merrily along on the fuel of fear and anger and frustration and craving and the worship of self." This Is Water, David Foster Wallace (2005)

[7] Seeing What Isn't There (The Importance of Missing Data)

[8] Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotions, page 156 (Victor Johnston, 2000)

[9] The Tyranny of Feelings

[10] To Stay Focused, Manage Your Emotions

[11] Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People)

[12] How to Think (More on Open Space and Deep Work) and The Most Productive People Know Who to Ignore

[13] Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, page 44 (Peter Drucker, 1974 /1993)

[14] Confusing Motion with Progress

[15] The Problem with Fighting Fires

 

Photos: Night sky by GPA Photo Archive. Magnifying glass by Flood G.

Weak Ties, Well-Being and Work Today

What types of interactions support well-being? Who helps us feel a sense of belonging and how? And what are the implications for our professional lives today?

A body of research dating back half a century has explored the distinction between "strong ties" and "weak ties" among people, reflected in the amount of time spent together, the emotional intensity and intimacy of the relationship, and the degree of reciprocity. The former typically exist between family members and close friends, while the latter characterize relationships between more distant colleagues and acquaintances.

Influential work by Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter showed that weak ties play a special role in the spread of information throughout social networks. [1] Because people who share a strong tie tend to be similar, and because strong ties often overlap, forming a node in a network, people in these relationships tend to have access to the same information.

Weak ties create more diverse connections across nodes, facilitating the dissemination of novel information. This is why you're more likely to hear about a job opportunity through a weak tie, from a colleague or acquaintance, which was one of Granovetter's most important findings.

More recent work by psychologist Gillian Sandstrom, among others, has demonstrated the impact of interactions with weak ties on our sense of well-being and belonging: "Community members who had, on average, more weak tie interactions than others reported greater feelings of belonging. Furthermore, people reported greater feelings of belonging on days when they interacted with more weak ties than usual." [2]

Subsequently Sandstrom and colleagues conducted a broad survey of related research, highlighting several noteworthy points:

• A more diverse social network (including both strong ties and weak ties) contributes to improved physical health.
• Weak ties are more likely to have helpful information regarding difficult life events.
• In some circumstances people prefer receiving support from weak ties rather than strong ties.
• Minor interactions with weak ties help satisfy our need to belong and contribute to well-being. [3]

That last point takes on a heightened significance when we consider that our understanding of what it means to "belong" is often focused on connections with strong ties. For example, in another influential paper psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary emphasized the extent to which our sense of belonging derives from relationships in which we experience lasting bonds characterized by emotional expression and intimacy. [4]

While my own work over the years has demonstrated the importance of safety, trust, and intimacy in supporting improved interpersonal performance [5], it's also been my experience that seemingly superficial "small talk" plays an outsized role in helping people develop these qualities in relationships and groups. [6] And it's clear that we can initiate such interactions more readily with weak ties--and that in many cases it's unlikely or unnecessary that weak ties become strong ones. [7]

Three years after the onset of the pandemic, I think these findings have meaningful implications for professionals who continue to work remotely and for leaders who are seeking to find the right balance of virtual and in-person work within their organizations. Recent data cited by The Wall Street Journal indicates that U.S. office occupancy is at 49 percent of pre-pandemic levels, and that figure has increased minimally over the past year, after rising from a low of 15 percent to over 40 percent in 2020-21. [8] It seems quite plausible that we've arrived at a "new normal."

I spend all day, every day talking with leaders in my coaching practice, and their experience mirrors these figures. With notable exceptions in fields such as biotech or manufacturing, my clients shifted to virtual work in 2020, slowly returned to spending some time in an office over the past two years, and have largely settled into a permanent-hybrid culture. Other than employees who never left the lab or the factory floor, almost no one is back in an office with all their colleagues five days a week. This has a number of benefits, as I identified in mid-2021:

Rather than viewing remote work during the pandemic as a temporary response to a crisis, my clients generally see it as a learning experience that enabled their organizations to become more flexible on a permanent basis. The benefits of this flexibility include responsiveness to employees' preferences, the ability to attract and retain talent in a wider range of geographical locations, and even increased productivity in some circumstances. The idea that remote work prevents hustle certainly hasn't occurred to my clients, although its impact on culture and idea generation is more complex. [9]

But this doesn't mean there aren't downsides to working virtually, or that my clients haven't struggled to address them, as I also noted: "It's becoming apparent that having every individual decide on a daily basis whether or not to join their colleagues in person will be sub-optimal and possibly dysfunctional. Instead, making the benefits of remote work sustainable will require a collective understanding of when, how, and why co-located work is necessary." [10]

The research on weak ties offers compelling evidence that organizations can support employees' sense of well-being and belonging by creating opportunities for such interactions among colleagues. I suspect that this is one of the most important benefits of in-person experiences, even (and perhaps especially) when they occur infrequently. But there are certainly ways to foster such interactions virtually, although this requires a much more deliberate and thoughtful approach than simply stringing Zoom meetings back-to-back-to-back all day. What might any of this look like in practice?

In-Person Events

As I wrote in mid-2021, my clients generally reject the idea that all employees need to be in the same building constantly, but they do agree with some of the concerns raised by leaders who want to get "back to the office":

They agree that aspects of organizational culture--specifically relationship-building and social cohesion--are supported by consistent in-person experiences, and they also agree that certain types of idea generation are more effective when people are physically present in the same room. However, they don't agree that everyone in the company needs to be in the office five days a week. Instead, they're determining which groups of people need to be co-located, for how long, and how often in order to accomplish these goals, and this can take any number of forms. Typically this involves more frequent in-person gatherings of the executive team and occasional in-person events for larger, more heterogeneous groups of employees. The key here is recognizing that in-person time is the scarce and valuable commodity, so long-term planning is critical, and time and effort must be expended to make the most of these opportunities. [11]

That trend has continued over the past two years. Most of my clients' executive teams conduct a substantial amount of their work virtually, and most of them include one or more members who live in different locations. But almost all of them get together in-person on a consistent basis, often for several days a month or even one or two weeks per quarter. And these events typically include a mix of structured activities and open, unstructured time intended to promote social interactions.

On a larger scale, most of my clients hold in-person events for functional teams and in some case the entire company. These occur less often, largely to minimize expenses and maintain productivity, but most clients who were holding such events pre-pandemic have continued to support them. And again, such events are generally designed to foster increased weak tie interactions.

Virtual Activities

Many in-person weak tie interactions occur as the result of serendipity and are unplanned--we encounter someone in a hallway, find ourselves behind them in a checkout line, or sit next to them at a meal. But virtual interactions that take place in real time, with both parties present, require advance planning and coordination. This not only adds a logistical burden but can also diminish the perceived value of the interaction, causing it to feel forced or awkward.

We're still in the process of identifying the best ways to encourage weak tie interactions in virtual settings, but there are steps we can take. At the outset of the pandemic when countless numbers of people experienced a dramatic decrease in weak tie interactions as the result of lockdowns, institutional closures, and social distancing, Sandstrom and Harvard Business School professor Ashley Whillans suggested several strategies, including the use of asynchronous channels that maintain a connection without requiring real time presence:

1. Use informal modes of communication.

Phone calls can feel intrusive, and emails seem impersonal. Instead, try reaching out to a weak tie via text message or Facebook. This will allow the other person to respond whenever they can, so you don’t need to worry about reaching out at the wrong time.

2. Don’t expect a reply.

Rejection rates when reaching out to a weak tie are extremely low--in one of Gillian’s studies fewer than 12 percent of people who talked to strangers experienced a rejection. [my emphasis] However...if you don’t get a response, don’t take it personally.

3. Set an expectation for a short and simple conversation.

Your goal is to let the other person know you are thinking about them and open up the opportunity to chat, if they want to. It’s okay to keep the conversation short: In recent data one of us collected, a "just right" conversation with a stranger was about 10 minutes long... [12]

But relying upon individuals to take the initiative to reach out virtually to weak ties will always be a partial solution. Organizations bear a responsibility to develop a virtual culture that supports weak tie interactions as well. What helps?

• Experiment with a range of virtual activities that go beyond business-as-usual: Rituals for Virtual Meetings (Kürşat Özenç and Glenn Fajardo, 2021) [13]
• Create more space for small talk and serendipity by managing time effectively: Take Five (Stop Meeting Back-to-Back-to-Back!)
• Provide support so employees can invest in tools and equipment to improve their virtual experience: Better Conditions for Working Remotely.

And on occasion, even weak ties may want to invest some time and energy to get to know each other better and perhaps grow a little stronger:

• CONNECTIONS: Meaningful Virtual Conversations

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Strength of Weak Ties (Mark Granovetter, American Journal of Sociology, 1973)

[2] Social Interactions and Well-Being: The Surprising Power of Weak Ties (Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2014). Sandstrom and Dunn acknowledge that their findings don't determine causality: "It is possible that feeling better causes people to interact with more weak ties; indeed these possibilities are not mutually exclusive." Even if causality runs in both directions, my work with many clients and personal experience leads me to find Sandstrom and Dunn's thesis compelling.

[3] Social support from weak ties: Insight from the literature on minimal social interactions (Joshua Moreton, Caitlin Kelly and Gillian M. Sandstrom, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2023)

[4] The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation (Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary, Psychological Bulletin, 1995)

[5] Safety, Trust, Intimacy. Also see Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups (Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven Wolff, Harvard Business Review, 2001).

[6] Bosses and Birthdays (The Importance of Small Talk)

[7] Five Levels of Communication

[8] The Covid-19 Crisis Is Officially Over. Everything Changed. (Stephanie Stamm and Danny Daugherty, The Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2023)

[9] Four Buckets (On Co-Located Work)

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Why You Miss Those Casual Friends So Much (Gillian Sandstrom and Ashley Whillans, Harvard Business Review, 2020)

[13] Özenç, a user experience designer, has also co-authored a related book for in-person activities: Rituals for Work (with Margaret Hagan, 2019).

Photo by AJ Cann.

Why We Crave Attention (and What We Can Do About It)

The subject of attention has been a preoccupation of mine since 2005, when I first began to appreciate its value and its power. [1] What we pay attention to matters, particularly for leaders, as I've noted before:

A leader’s most precious resource is not their time. It’s their focused attention. Time merely passes, while focused attention makes things happen. When we’re able to gather and direct our attention toward a particular task or interaction, we can have a significant impact in a minimal amount of time. But when we’re unable to bring our attention to bear on the work at hand, all the time in the world is insufficient. [2]

Attention isn't merely an individual resource--it's a social one. The collective attention of a group of people has a powerful effect, particularly when we are the object of its focus. This is a key theme in Status Anxiety by contemporary philosopher Alain de Botton, who suggests that we pursue various forms of status in order to obtain love--not romantic love, but what he calls "love from the world":

The predominant impulse behind our desire to rise in the social hierarchy may be rooted not so much in the material goods we can accrue or the power we can wield as in the amount of love we stand to receive as a consequence of high status. Money, fame and influence may be valued more as tokens of--and means to--love rather than ends in themselves. [3]

A significant influence on De Botton's line of reasoning is Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, which discusses attention explicitly:

It is chiefly from this regard to the sentiments of mankind, that we pursue riches and avoid poverty. For to what purpose is all the toil and bustle of this world? What is the end of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth, of power and preeminence? Is it to supply the necessities of nature? The wages of the meanest laborer can supply them...

What are the advantages which we propose by that great purpose of human life which we call bettering our condition? To be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency and approbation, are all the advantages which we can propose to derive from it. It is the vanity, not the ease, or the pleasure, which interests us. But vanity is always founded upon the belief of our being the object of attention and approbation. The rich man glories in his riches because he feels that they naturally draw upon him the attention of the world...

The poor man, on the contrary, is ashamed of his poverty. He feels that it...places him out of the sight of mankind... To feel that we are taken no notice of, necessarily damps the most agreeable hope, and disappoints the most ardent desire, of human nature. [4]

I find Smith and De Botton's argument deeply thought-provoking: Why do we pursue wealth, power and status? Not for the material rewards alone, but for the attention. It is attention we crave, and we feel its absence acutely. This offers a compelling explanation for much behavior that otherwise seems curious or counterintuitive:

• A theme in my coaching practice is the ambivalence many leaders feel about their engagement with social media. They want to represent their organization, build credibility, and maintain relationships, but they often find the experience stressful or distracting. And yet when they opt out they feel anxious and guilty.
• During my 15 years at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, I taught over 1,000 MBA students, and held countless conversations with them about their career plans. A disproportionate number were drawn to high-profile opportunities with a low likelihood of success and had little interest in fields that promised a reliable path to wealth but were less socially prominent.
• Tragically, there's a Wikipedia page tracking selfie-related accidents, which currently reports that 379 people have died in such incidents since 2008. [5] That's a minuscule number--more than 13,000 people die every hour. [6] But given the strength of our survival instinct, it's noteworthy that anyone would put themselves in jeopardy for such an ephemeral result.

There are a number of causes behind these phenomena. Leaders possess a strong sense of responsibility and perform many onerous tasks as a result. MBAs believe they should take bigger risks now and pursue a more secure path only if necessary. And some people are just heedless and foolish.

But a thread that connects them is the power of attention: Social media is the ultimate expression of the attention economy, and and the various platforms are carefully engineered to maximize engagement by manipulating attention. [7] Working in a glamorous field is an effective way to attract attention early in one's career, while growing wealthy in a steady but low-visibility industry is not. And when it may be difficult to attract attention by other means, the temptation to do so via a dangerous but eye-catching selfie can override one's good judgment. I'm sure you can think of other examples you've observed--or participated in.

What's going on here? Why does the attention of others exert so much influence over human behavior? One school of thought views this as a moral failing, chastising "attention-seekers" for their seemingly insincere efforts to attract the spotlight. But while some people may go to bizarre lengths in their pursuit of attention, they strike me as different in degree, not in kind, from the rest of us.

I think a more accurate and less judgmental explanation can be found in an understanding of evolution and its implications for our emotional life and social structures. Evolutionary psychiatrist Randolph Nesse, who's studied how biological history has shaped the human psyche, makes a telling comment:

Evolution explains the origins of our amazing capacities for love and goodness and why they carry the price of grief, guilt, and, thank goodness, caring inordinately about what others think about us. [8, emphasis mine]

We care deeply about others' opinions of us, and the most fundamental aspect of this process is whether or not they are paying attention to us. Recall Adam Smith: "To feel that we are taken no notice of, necessarily damps the most agreeable hope, and disappoints the most ardent desire, of human nature." We may think of such emotions as uniquely personal, arising out of our singular life experiences. But Nesse cites the eminent biologist Edward O. Wilson to disabuse us of this notion:

Love joins hate; aggression, fear; expansiveness, withdrawal; and so on; in blends designed not to promote the happiness of the individual, but to favor the maximum transmission of the controlling genes. [9]

So our emotional apparatus and the subjective feelings it gives rise to serve to support our evolutionary fitness and the ability to transmit our genes. Presumably, then, our craving for others' attention and the anxiety and dismay resulting from its absence offers an evolutionary advantage. To understand this, we need to consider the importance of our social nature as a species.

Like all primates, humans evolved to rely upon social structures to obtain resources and to defeat or evade threats. Work by anthropologist Robin Dunbar shows that early humans were able to establish groups of approximately 150 members, a much larger number than our evolutionary rivals. [10] This advantage allowed us to dominate the planet, but it came at a cost--we faced the greatest competition for resources (most notably mating opportunities and food) from within the group. Neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman suggests that this intra-group pressure led us to focus intensively on our social environment, giving rise to a keen sensitivity to our relative group status:

Evolution, figuratively speaking, made a big bet on the importance of developing and using our social intelligence for the overall success of our species by focusing the brain's free time on it... The repeated return of the brain to this social cognitive mode of engagement is perfectly situated to help us become experts in the enormously complex realm of social living... In essence, our brains are built to practice thinking about the social world and our place in it." [11, emphasis original]

As with so many aspects of our psychology, all of these dynamics are "features" for the species that often manifest as "bugs" in our individual experience. Our distant ancestors who were more attuned to their social standing as a consequence of the emotions generated by others' attention (and its absence) were more likely to pass on their genes. Their more oblivious contemporaries were at greater risk of losing social status, losing competitions for resources, and losing opportunities to pass on their genes.

The result, after 200,000 years and some 10,000 human generations, is that we're acutely sensitive to others' attention and the feelings that arise from its presence or absence. Being the "center of attention" can lead some people to feel flustered or self-conscious, so more attention isn't always better (although even embarrassment is socially adaptive. [12]) But a craving for attention is a potent driver of emotions and behavior.

Perhaps you're like my clients, feeling ambivalent about your relationship with social media but unable to disengage. Or you're like some of my former MBA students, forgoing financially preferable options in search of greater visibility. Or maybe you've even done something foolish while taking a selfie. If these examples of attention-seeking behavior aren't relevant to you, I suspect you can identify numerous others that are.

To be clear, there's nothing "wrong" with such behavior--my intention here is to show that these responses are the predictable result of the way our minds work, and to portray the benefits of these dynamics as well as the costs. But the benefits are spread across homo sapiens as a collective, while we bear the costs as individuals--a burden that seems to be increasing as the "attention economy" evolves.

Further, when we bear in mind the well-established psychological principle that "bad is stronger than good," [13] it's apparent that attention-seeking behavior is driven more by our anxiety and dismay at the prospect of being ignored than by any satisfaction we derive from being noticed, which at the very least renders life more stressful. So what can we do? What helps?

Self-Awareness

Understanding why we do what we do starts with acknowledging and even embracing the flaws and foibles of our psyches. It's important to remind ourselves that we can't overcome evolutionary psychology, nor would we want to, given the potential benefits of these dynamics. In practice this entails a greater degree of mindfulness, which therapist and meditation teacher Linda Graham defines simply as "nonjudgmental awareness and acceptance of experience," [14] and which I describe as follows:

Mindfulness need not be viewed as an esoteric or mystical subject, although it's often perceived that way. It's merely the process of noticing what's happening around us, observing where our attention is going as a result, and sensing our cognitive, emotional and physical responses. A heightened sense of mindfulness allows us to direct our attention toward an intended object of focus and away from undesirable distractions. [15]

Note the relationship here between our awareness of others' attention (or its absence) and the impact on our own. Our craving for others' attention evokes a host of emotions, which we invariably find captivating because "emotions are attention magnets." [16] Mere awareness of these feelings isn't sufficient to alter our emotional experience, but in its absence they will exert a powerful influence on our behavior--occasionally to our detriment.

Emotion Regulation

At the most basic level, emotions alert us to perceived opportunities and threats, and we move toward the former with excitement and away from the latter with apprehension. As evolutionary psychiatrist Nesse notes, this typically helps us achieve our social goals more effectively--but not always:

The utility of an emotion depends entirely on the situation. In the face of threats or losses, anxiety and sadness are useful, but happy relaxation is worse than useless. When opportunities emerge, desire and enthusiasm are useful, but worry and sadness are harmful... If only all situations were so simple. For humans trying to navigate inordinately complex social networks, almost every situation involves conflicting opportunities, risks, gains, and losses, with vast complexity and uncertainty. [17]

The anxiety evoked by an insufficiency of others' attention and the pleasure that accompanies a surfeit can certainly be helpful sources of data in guiding behavior--this is a key lesson of evolutionary psychology. The dilemma is that emotions are a "quick and dirty signal," in the words of neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, which can sometimes lead us off course. [18] Compounding the problem is our immersion in the increasingly subtle machinery of the "attention economy," which is designed to stoke our emotions--sometimes for better, often for worse, always for the benefit of the platform.

While we can't control the emotions evoked by others' attention (or its absence), once we're more aware of those feelings we can intervene to regulate them. It's essential to bear in mind that emotion regulation does not mean suppressing our feelings. Suppression is an act of make-believe--we pretend we're not feeling what we're feeling and hope to distract ourselves until the feeling passes. We can do this for short periods, but not for an extended length of time, and the effort may even be counter-productive. In contrast, emotion regulation involves improving our ability to sense, comprehend, articulate and express what we're feeling, and we develop those skills by getting closer to our emotions, not by distancing ourselves from them. [19]

Intentional Action

Neuroscience research going back several decades makes clear that emotions are vitally important inputs to the reasoning process, the occasional "noisy signal" notwithstanding. [20] But with a greater capacity to influence--as opposed to control--our emotional experience, we can allow those feelings to inform our behavioral choices with greater forethought. We can act more intentionally.

I'm not suggesting that our every move should be planned out in advance. As I learned many years ago, at times we're best served by acting instinctively, with a high degree of spontaneity and in the absence of self-consciousness. [21] But even the decision to adopt that stance can be an intentional one, rather than a reflexive response triggered by anxiety or apprehension.

So perhaps you do stay active on social media--but you do so intentionally, sharing what truly interests you rather than inflammatory content that drives engagement, without obsessing over likes or follower counts, and logging off without anxiety. And perhaps you do pursue that risky venture--but you do so intentionally, driven by a search for meaning and purpose in your work, rather than a desire to impress others or a fear of missing out. And perhaps you even take that eye-catching selfie--but maybe you just fake it. [22]

 

This is a companion piece to the following:

• Attention Surplus Disorder (Anxiety and Distraction)
• Why You Can't Stop Thinking About Something
• A Better Information Diet

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Footnotes

[1] In 2005 I was so inspired by Seth Goldstein's analysis of the potential value of metadata that I spent a year working with him and numerous others on an effort to empower people to gather and make use of their own "attention data." I left that role to launch my coaching practice in 2006, but my immersion in that world impressed upon me the importance of attention, a perspective that has heavily informed my work with clients and students in the years since. A compilation of my writing on attention through 2019 can be found at the conclusion of A Better Information Diet.

[2] To Stay Focused, Manage Your Emotions

[3] Status Anxiety, page 6 (Alain de Botton, 2005)

[4] The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Section III, Chapter II (Adam Smith, 1759, pages 62-63 in the 2010 edition. An abridged version is cited on page 5 of Status Anxiety.)

[5] List of selfie-related injuries and deaths (Wikipedia)

[6] How Many People Die Each Day in 2023? (World Population Review)

[7] A Better Information Diet

[8] Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry, page xv (Randolph Nesse, 2020)

[9] Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, page 4 (Edward O. Wilson, 1975/2000, and cited on pages 48-49 of Good Reasons for Bad Feelings)

[10] Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates (Robin Dunbar, Journal of Human Evolution, 1992)

[11] Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, pages 19-22 (Matthew Lieberman, 2013)

[12] The Value of Embarrassment

[13] Bad Is Stronger Than Good (Roy Bauermeister, Catrin Finkenauer, Ellen Bratslavsky, and Kathleen Vohs, Review of General Psychology, 2001)

[14] Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being, page 51 (Linda Graham, 2013)

[15] Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People)

[16] Why You Can't Stop Thinking About Something

[17] Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry, pages 55-56

[18] The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life, page 163 (Joseph LeDoux, 1998)

[19] Adapted from The Tyranny of Feelings.

[20] Antonio Damasio on Emotion and Reason

[21] Awareness and Spontaneity

[22] Two favorite examples: Photograph of Cliff Hanger Isn't Quite What It Seems (Dan Evon, Snopes, 2015) and Pilot says he Photoshops his selfies, and yet somehow people still think they're real (Gianluca Mezzofiore, Mashable, 2017)

 

Photo of The National by Matt Biddulph.

Three Painful Truths (On Change, Leadership & Mortality)

I believe three things to be true:

• We're entering an era of heightened uncertainty and instability.
• Leadership roles will be increasingly stressful as a result.
• This existence is finite, and we are mortal creatures.

(You may wonder why two predictions are followed by such a self-evident proposition--I'll address that below.)

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, and if you'd rather ignore these painful truths I wouldn't blame you in the least. Some leaders will do just that, and they'll be happier as a result--for a while. They'll turn a blind eye to the increasing volatility that has characterized our world--until change imposes itself upon them. They'll continue to lead as they've led in the past, and they'll get by--until they're depleted and burned out. They'll do all the things we do when we imagine we're immortal--until that illusion is no longer sustainable.

I'm not suggesting that we're incapable of rising to meet these challenges. A dynamic world is full of opportunities as well as risks. Tough times make great leaders and give them occasions to shine. And the finite nature of this existence is what makes it meaningful. At my best, I embrace all of this, and my hopeful nature picks me up when I'm daunted. But my pragmatism makes it very clear that faith alone will not see us through. We need to accept reality. We need to develop our resilience. And we'll need support along the way. First, though, it's worth exploring why these truths are so painful and how they're related.

 

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On Change

We all have different orientations toward change, and our personal attitude can vary tremendously over the course of our lives. Some of us embrace it more willingly than others, and we're all more or less open at different times, depending on our circumstances. But we also possess a powerful drive to exert control in our lives. We may embrace change willingly, even eagerly, and yet it's vital that we experience agency in the process.

As I've written before, "pioneering psychotherapist Alfred Adler theorized that a 'will to conquer' the cosmos is the fundamental human motivation [1], and work by psychologists over the past century indicates that a desire to exert influence and determine outcomes is widespread and pervasive. [2] Recent research by a team from Columbia and Rutgers suggests that this need for control is inherently biological, not merely a socialized preference. [3]" [4]

But data from a number of disciplines suggests that the pace of change is increasing, rendering our world less certain and more unstable, making it more difficult to exert control. We see this as a result of developments in artificial intelligence [5], the likelihood of future pandemics [6], concerns about the banking system and financial markets [7], long-term cycles of social discord [8], and even the weather. [9]

Our inherent "will to conquer" and our evolved desire for control are in direct tension with these trends, all of which seem to be accelerating, albeit at varying rates. It will grow more difficult to exert control and experience agency in a world subject to larger and less predictable dislocations. And while these changes will present us with endless opportunities for innovation and growth (as individuals, as societies, as a species), it will be painful to recognize the inevitable limits on our control and agency, to submit to forces beyond our influence (or comprehension), to accept disruption as an ongoing state of affairs, rather than a brief jolt.

 

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On Leadership

In this unsettling environment we will increasingly look to leaders for guidance and reassurance, placing more pressure on them to shield us from the forces of change--and to help us find courage when change overtakes us. This is a function of the symbolic role that leaders fill--leadership isn't just about making strategic decisions and allocating resources. It is also--and I would suggest first and foremost--about storytelling, a topic I've addressed at length:

Storytelling [is] such a powerful process...because we depend upon narratives to navigate the world--they are our compass in the wilderness, our lantern in the dark. Organizational psychologist Karl Weick called this "sensemaking": we rely upon narratives to "make sense" of ambiguous situations and pursue a plan of action in coordination with others. But our reliance on narratives means that in the absence of a coherent story we will feel lost and ungrounded. This poses a risk when we face rapid change that may overtake our existing narrative and render it out of date, as Weick noted: "People...act as if events cohere in time and space and that change unfolds in an orderly manner. These everyday cosmologies are subject to disruption." [10]... Through the act of storytelling the leader provides the group with an explanatory narrative that is invested with their authority and informed by their expertise, and thus more influential and credible. [11]

At the best of times this is hard work, both cognitively complex and emotionally taxing, and it will only grow more challenging in the era to come. What are the explanatory narratives that will reconstruct our "everyday cosmologies"? How will our ability to understand the world around us keep up with the accelerating pace of change? Leaders will be hard-pressed to answer these questions--and one way of interpreting the leadership failures we see everywhere today is as a failure of imagination, an inability to identify and communicate a compelling story that enables people to "make sense of ambiguous situations and pursue a plan of action in coordination with others."

Compounding this difficulty is the dual burden we place upon leaders. We expect them to serve as avatars, embodying the community they serve, scrupulously adhering to cultural norms and values, and scrutinizing their behavior for any deviations. [12] But even as we impose these demands upon them, we simultaneously fail to "empathize up." As I've noted before, "Even if we have a good relationship with someone in a superior position, the relative nature of our respective positions can create a sense of 'otherness' that makes it psychologically difficult for us to empathize with that person’s perspective and emotions." [13] We will ask more of leaders and offer them less in return.

But aren't leaders well-compensated for these pains? It's inarguable that executive compensation has risen dramatically since the 1970s. [14] And yet, as I wrote recently, "The status, compensation and other perks [of leadership roles] are pleasurable, to be sure, but their power as sources of motivation inevitably diminishes or even disappears. A process psychologists call 'hedonic adaptation' ensures that we adjust to our circumstances and eventually take them for granted. [15] I see this constantly in my practice--leaders may strive mightily for years to obtain a certain position or achieve a given financial goal, and when they do the feeling of accomplishment is frequently less fulfilling and more ephemeral than they expected." [16]

I've witnessed all of this in my work with leaders over the past two decades as the trends described above gained strength. As they accelerate in the era to come, leaders will be insulated from some of the painful consequences of change, but the experience of leadership itself will grow more stressful and demanding.

 

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On Mortality

This existence is finite, and we are mortal creatures. Why make such an obvious statement--and how is it relevant to my points above? First, what may appear obvious in principle is anything but in practice. It is painful to acknowledge our mortality, and we strenuously resist doing so. Anthropologist and philosopher Ernest Becker located this at the heart of the human condition:

The essence of man is really his paradoxical nature, the fact that he is half animal and half symbolic... He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history, [but] his body aches and bleeds and will decay and die. It is a terrifying dilemma. [17]

Our terror serves an essential purpose, Becker argues--the fear of death is "an expression of the instinct of self-preservation, which functions as a constant drive to maintain life and to master the dangers that threaten life." [18] But to function on a day-to-day basis we have to keep our fear of death on the margins of consciousness, a point Becker makes by citing the psychoanalyst and historian Gregory Zilboorg--the fear of death "must be properly repressed to keep us living with any modicum of comfort... Therefore in normal times we move about actually without ever believing in our own death, as if we fully believed in our own corporeal immortality." [19]

And why does this matter? Because the definition of "normal times" is changing, and in the tumultuous era now underway many of us will be reminded of our mortality much more frequently. For billions of people mortality is already an everyday affair, of course, but Becker and Zilboorg are writing for anyone not yet familiar with death. (They were--Becker liberated a Nazi concentration camp at age 20, and Zilboorg witnessed the Russian Revolution at age 27.)

The trying circumstances to come will be painful, but we will undoubtedly survive. I'm a realist, not an alarmist, and humanity has endured far worse. But I suspect that in this new era one of our most reliable tools for "terror management" [20] will be less effective. I'm referring to what we might call "heroic projects," a concept derived from Becker's work that has had a significant influence on my own:

As described by Sam Keen in his introduction to Becker's The Denial of Death, Becker believed that "the basic motivation for human behavior is our biological need to control our basic anxiety, to deny the terror of death," and over the course of our lives we engage in any number of activities with the (typically unconscious) goal of achieving a symbolic victory over mortality, which offers us at least a provisional respite from this terror. These energies can be directed toward many different ends--raising a family, building a business, pursuing fame or status or wealth. [21]

I believe that this is one of the primary reasons why people pursue leadership roles, despite all of the headaches and heartaches noted above. Leadership itself is a heroic project, an attempt to make a difference, leave a legacy, and in so doing strive to transcend mortality. Few leaders take a job or start a company with this goal explicitly in mind, but it's often a factor at some level. [22]

This striving ultimately proves futile, and at some point we must all come to terms with mortality. Whatever we may believe about what precedes or follows this existence, its finite nature eventually asserts itself. And yet this doesn't render our heroic projects invalid or unworthy. It is right and necessary that we make these efforts--that's how we keep the terror of death at bay, which allows us to function. We raise the family, build the business, pursue fame or status or wealth, hoping that when we accomplish our goal we'll finally feel some ease, a sense of peace, mission accomplished. That hope may be misplaced, but there's nothing wrong with striving toward an illusory goal when it's the striving that matters, and heroic projects serve that purpose.

But this work is hard enough when times are good and life is predictable, and it will be increasingly difficult in the era that is emerging. The factors noted above--artificial intelligence, future pandemics, financial instability, social discord, and even the weather will make it harder for leaders to reliably pursue and accomplish any number of heroic projects. This doesn't mean there will be fewer opportunities for heroism--as I note above, tough times make great leaders. But even the best leaders' efforts will be repeatedly thwarted, and it will be painful.

 

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So What Can We Do?

There's no simple solution, but there are certainly steps we can take. We can ready ourselves by acknowledging and accepting reality. We can prepare by developing our capacity for resilience. And we can identify and obtain the support we'll need in the process. What will this look like in practice?

Acceptance

I'm not a Buddhist, but I've learned much from teacher and author Pema Chödrön, and I find myself returning to this passage in difficult times:

We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect... Doing this is setting ourselves up for failure, because sooner or later, we're going to have an experience that we can't control: our house is going to burn down, someone we love is going to die, we're going to find out we have cancer, a brick is going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head... To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. [23]

Mindfulness, exercise, a healthy diet--all worthy endeavors that I highly recommend. [24] But many of us pursue such activities in precisely the way that Chödrön describes--with the goal of exerting control over our minds and bodies under the illusion that doing so will guarantee that our experience in the world is predictable and pleasant. The absurdity of that idea will likely grow more evident in the years to come.

We should continue these efforts, but with full awareness that they will not keep us safe and secure in the nest. We can't predict the nature of the unexpected event that will throw us out, but somehow, some day, we will be thrown out. This need not entail a passive stance in the face of difficulties--but rather than react with shock and outrage, we can respond with acceptance and determination.

Resilience

We often misunderstand the meaning of resilience, confusing it with invulnerability or toughness. The etymological root of resilience is the Latin resilire, which means "to rebound, recoil or jump back." Resilient materials deform under pressure while retaining their internal consistency, later returning to their original form. Iron is tough, but it's not resilient--when it reaches its breaking point it shatters into pieces. Being resilient in the face of difficulties doesn't mean that we're unaffected by painful experiences. Being resilient means that we have the ability to absorb the impact, respond flexibly, adapt to the resulting stress and pressure, and persist in these efforts over time--without shattering into pieces. [25]

A model of resilience was Admiral James Stockdale, a prisoner of war for seven years in Vietnam. When he was asked by business author Jim Collins who among his fellow POWs were least likely to survive, he replied,

Oh, it’s easy. I can tell you who didn’t make it out. It was the optimists... They were the ones who always said, "We’re going to be out by Christmas." Christmas would come and it would go. And there would be another Christmas. And they died of a broken heart... This is what I learned from those years in the prison camp, where all those constraints just were oppressive. You must never ever ever confuse, on the one hand, the need for absolute, unwavering faith that you can prevail despite those constraints with, on the other hand, the need for the discipline to begin by confronting the brutal facts, whatever they are. We’re not getting out of here by Christmas. [26]

Among the various factors that contribute to resilience [27], one of the most important is emotion regulation, which is what enables that critical balance between faith that we will prevail and discipline to confront the brutal facts. The popular conception of emotions as mindless impulses that are antagonistic to logical reasoning is woefully inadequate and out-of-date. Neuroscientists have known for decades that emotions are vitally important inputs to the reasoning process. [28] At the same time, as neuroscientist Antonio Damasio notes, "uncontrolled or misdirected emotion can be a major source of irrational behavior"--a truism evident to anyone who's witnessed a panicked mob...or a bank run. [29]

We can't control our emotions--nor would we want to [30]--but we can regulate them, which entails improving our ability to sense, comprehend, articulate and express what we're feeling. [31] This is of the utmost importance for leaders in the midst of a crisis, not only because they must manage their own inner emotional state, but also because their emotions are contagious. [32] Establishing that balance between faith and discipline on a team--or in a nation--starts with the leader's ability to look within and do the same.

Support

Leading is an inherently social task, and yet it is often a lonely one. As I wrote years ago, reflecting on my own experiences, "If you're a leader at the head of an organization, by definition you don't have internal peers who share your perspective. Your Board of Directors isn't going to provide you with the developmental support you've enjoyed from previous mentors and managers--they're there to challenge you, not to nurture you. And your family is going to get tired of hearing about the challenges you face long before you get tired of talking about them." [33] So it's essential for leaders to have people they can turn to for support, and those relationships need to be up and running long before a crisis hits.

While I'm obviously a strong supporter of coaching, by no means is a coach a leader's only option. I tell my clients that I'm merely one member of their "coaching team," and they should activate as many others as possible, while taking care to identify truly trustworthy allies. [34] This includes family members and friends, who, even if they have limited patience or skills, can be guided into serving as more effective sources of support. [35]

I also advise my clients to think systemically, which in this context entails recognizing that all of the other leaders around them will be struggling with the challenges identified above. There are limits on colleagues' ability to offer support, thus the need for coaches and other external resources. But optimally peers and teammates will be there for each other when needed--and this rests upon an organizational culture that values empathy without sacrificing accountability. [36]

 

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In Closing

 My work piles up,
I falter with disease.
Time rushes toward me--
it has no brakes. Still,
the radishes are good this year.
Run them through butter,
add a little salt.

~Jim Harrison, "Zona" [37]

This poem was among those found on Harrison's writing desk when he died in 2016. Harrison is a hero of mine, not least because he faced adversity--the loss of an eye as a child, the death of his father and sister in an automobile accident, years of struggle as a writer--and yet he persevered, living a richly fulfilling life and completing a vast body of work.

He was dying when he wrote the lines above, and no doubt he knew it, but that knowledge didn't stop him from working, or from enjoying all that this existence has to offer, right up until the end. I hope to find inspiration in his example during the challenges I will no doubt face in the years to come. I hope this piece encourages you to do the same.

The radishes are good this year. Run them through butter, add a little salt.

 

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For Further Reading

Change

• The Obstacle Is The Way
• Aggression, Panic, Paralysis, Denial
• Tumbling Down Maslow's Hierarchy
• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2008)

Leadership

• How Leaders Overcome Adversity
• From Peacetime to Wartime
• Leadership as Professional Practice
• Compass and Weathervanes (30 Questions for Leaders)

Mortality

• Not Every End Is a Goal (On Midlife Malaise)
• The Final Third (On Mortality, Values and Spending Time)
• Death: The End of Self-Improvement (Joan Tollifson, 2019)
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (Oliver Burkeman, 2021)

Acceptance

• When We Are Ready, the Practice Will Be Waiting
• On the Shortness of Life
• When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Pema Chödrön, 1996/2016)
• Gratitude (Oliver Sacks, 2015)

Resilience

• The Tyranny of Feelings
• How to Cross Antarctica (On Surviving Chaos)
• How I Read Stoicism
• Ignoring Bandits and Building Resilience

Support

• How to Find (and Choose) a Coach
• Getting Coaching for Your Team
• Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others (Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, 2009)
• Helping: How to Offer, Give and Receive Help (Edgar Schein, 2009)

 

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Footnotes

[1] "Individual Psychology" (Alfred Adler, Chapter 21 in Psychologies of 1930, edited by Carl Murchison, 1930)

[2] Feeling of Control Viewed as Central in Mental Health (Daniel Goleman, The New York Times, October 7, 1986):

Researchers are finding that the sense of being in control, and the desire for such control, are more crucial and pervasive aspects of personality than psychologists had previously realized... 'We have a deep need to feel competent, to be in control of our environment; it is one of the primary motives in behavior,' said Jerry Burger, a psychologist at the University of Santa Clara.

[3] Born to Choose: The Origins and Value of the Need for Control (Lauren Leotti, Sheena Iyengar and Kevin Ochsner, Trends in Cognitive Science, October 2010):

Belief in one’s ability to exert control over the environment and to produce desired results is essential for an individual’s well being. It has been repeatedly argued that the perception of control is not only desirable, but it is likely a psychological and biological necessity... Converging evidence from animal research, clinical studies, and neuroimaging work suggest that the need for control is a biological imperative for survival.

[4] Excerpted from Authority and Control in Organizational Life.

[5] Embracing the rapid pace of AI (Laurel Ruma interviewing Cliff Justice, US leader for enterprise innovation, KPMG, MIT Technology Review, 2021):

Cliff Justice: Even if one could fully wrap their head around the progress of artificial intelligence and the potential of artificial intelligence, changing an organization and changing the mindset and the culture in a way to adopt and benefit from the opportunities that artificial intelligence poses and also protect against the threats take some time. So, it creates a level of anxiety and caution which is, in my view, well justified.

[6] See Statistics Say Large Pandemics Are More Likely Than We Thought (Michael Penn, Duke Global Health Institute, 2021) and Pandemics Will be More Frequent (Abraham Haileamlak M.D., Ethiopian Journal of Health Science / National Library of Medicine, 2022).

[7] To take just one example, see Fed Walks Tightrope Between Inflation and Bank Turmoil—but for How Long? (Greg Ip, The Wall Street Journal, 2023)

[8] As I wrote in my December 2020 newsletter, "The historian Peter Turchin has a theory that complex societies undergo predictable periodic crises, driven by 1) a decline in general wages, 2) heightened competition among elites, and 3) the loss of asabiya, an Arabic term that refers to 'the capacity of a social group for concerted collective action.' This characterized the U.S. in the middle of the 19th century, and the result, Turchin would argue, was the Civil War. A similar set of circumstances prevailed in the U.S. after World War I, when the country experienced a surge of violent activity, from racist mobs to labor strife. At both junctures U.S. society underwent a profound and dramatic change, and Turchin believes we’re at a similar point in the historical cycle. We’re unlikely to return to the status quo ante, he suggests, because the current environment isn’t a function of the pandemic, or the current administration, or any single given cause. These factors may not be causes at all, but, rather, symptoms of much larger trends to be observed over the past 50 years in the three elements in Turchin’s model."

[9] See Explaining Extreme Events in 2021 and 2022 from a Climate Perspective (American Meteorological Society, 2022)

[10] "The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster" (Karl Weick, Administrative Science Quarterly, Volume 38, Number 4, December 1993)

[11] Excerpted from The Importance of Shared Narrative.

[12] Adapted from Leader as Avatar.

[13] Excerpted from The Difficulty of Empathizing Up.

[14] See CEO Compensation: Data (David Larcker, Bryan Tayan, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2019) and CEO Compensation (Carola Frydman, MIT Sloan School of Management and Dirk Jenter, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2008)

[15] Early research on hedonic adaptation dates back to the 1970s--for example, see Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative? (Philip Brickman, Dan Coates and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1978). More recently, UC Riverside Sonja Lyubomirsky provides what I find to be the most useful descriptions of the concept:

Although we may achieve temporary boosts in well-being by moving to new parts of the country, securing raises, or changing our appearances, such boosts are unlikely to be long-lasting. The primary reason...is that people readily and rapidly adapt to positive circumstantial changes. (The How of Happiness, page 63, 2007)

The more we attain, the happier we become. But, at the same time, the more we attain, the more we want, which negates the increased happiness. (The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does, page 120, 2014) 

[16] Excerpted from Leaders Love Puzzles (for Better and for Worse).

[17] The Denial of Death, pages 25-26 (Ernest Becker, 1973)

[18] Ibid, page 16.

[19] "Fear of Death" (Gregory Zilboorg, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1943, cited in The Denial of Death, page 17)

[20] I'm not aware that Ernest Becker ever used the term "terror management," but his work has been the inspiration for a concept in psychology known as terror management theory.

[21] Excerpted from Learning From Sisyphus.

[22] I'm convinced that this explains much of the ongoing fascination with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs well over a decade after his death. While he deserves to be remembered as a gifted entrepreneur who launched and later rescued an iconic company that continues to influence the culture at large, it is the fact that he is remembered at all that makes him a mythic figure in the eyes of so many leaders today. Jobs succeeded--at least for the time being--in achieving his heroic project. Of all the successful businesspeople from the past, perhaps only Henry Ford compares, the Jobs of his era. We still know Ford's name, although it doesn't come up in my practice nearly as often as Jobs'. And while both will eventually be forgotten, the fact that they are remembered is what makes them relevant, even more than the accomplishments that made them memorable.

[23] When Things Fall Apart, page 70 (Pema Chödrön, 1997)

[24] See the following:

• Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People
• Get Moving! (Exercise for Busy People)
• Low-Carb High-Fat (LCHF) Resources

[25] Adapted from The Ruling Out of Possibilities (On Failure).

[26] The Stockdale Paradox (Jim Collins, 2017)

[27] Work by psychologists Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté suggests that resilience is a function of the extent to which we manifest certain characteristics and engage in specific behaviors, all of which are learnable or subject to influence: Emotion regulation, impulse control, optimism, causal analysis, empathy, self-efficacy and reaching out. See The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life's Hurdles, Chapter 2: How Resilient Are You?, pages 31-47 (Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté, 2002).

[28] Antonio Damasio on Emotion and Reason

[29] Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain, page 53 (Antonio Damasio, 2005)

[30] "It is clear that emotion should not be very susceptible to willful control. If we could turn off all our emotions, feel no pain, never laugh, not be gripped by fear or despair, stop being excited, and so on, we could easily end up dead... The priority of emotions over will is important for our survival because it allows our plans to be interrupted by the immediate pressures of reality.." From White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts: Suppression, Obsession, and the Psychology of Mental Control, page 123 (Daniel Wegner, 2nd edition, 1994)

[31] The Tyranny of Feelings

[32] For more on leadership and emotional contagion:

• The Contagious Leader: Impact of the Leader's Mood on the Mood of Group Members, Group Affective Tone, and Group Processes (Thomas Sy, Stephane Cote and Richard Saavedra, Journal of Applied Psychology, 2005)
• For better results, emotional contagion matters (Sigal Barsade, Wharton @ Work, 2011)
• Leadership and Emotional Contagion (Louise Altman, Intentional Communication, 2011)
• Contagious leaders and followers: Exploring multi-stage mood contagion in a leader activation and member propagation (LAMP) model (Thomas Sy and Jin Nam Choi, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2013)
• Emotion contagion in leadership (Inga Minelgaite and Egle Vaiciukynaite, Business and Economic Horizons, 2016)

[33] Leading Is Lonely and Other Thoughts

[34] The Friendship of Wolves

[35] What Do You Need Right Now? (Advice, Listening, A Hug?)

[36] For more on organizational culture, see the following:

• Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)
• Hard Problems in Soft Cultures
• Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

[37] Dead Man's Float (Jim Harrison, 2016)

 

Photos: Coyote traps courtesy of Fur-Fish-Game. The Edith Macefield house courtesy of My Modern Met. And Jesus Wept in Oklahoma City by Jerry Worster. San Francisco National Cemetery by Hitchster. Weightlifter by U.S. Navy 6th Fleet. Radishes by sk.

Extending Your Personal Runway

When a company isn't yet profitable, leadership is always keenly aware of their runway. The amount of cash at their disposal net ongoing expenses will determine the length of time they can continue to operate before something has to change: achieving profitability, raising additional capital, major cost-cutting, or ceasing operations. A theme in my practice is the leader who's assessing their "personal runway," which isn't quite as easy to calculate but has similar implications: There's a limited amount of time that they can sustain the status quo before something has to change.

My clients typically begin a coaching engagement occupying a leadership role that they expect to hold for the foreseeable future. But we work together for relatively long periods of time, so it's not uncommon for me to talk with a client about the possibility of a professional transition. In some cases this is a result of a change in the business, such as a potential sale to an acquirer or a major shift in strategy.

But just as often there's a change in my client, and they unexpectedly find themselves staring down the runway, wondering how far it extends. They're not planning to leave suddenly--which would be neither feasible nor desirable--but they've realized that they have a finite capacity to continue in their current role, and they're unsure how much time they'll have before they feel compelled to act.

Why does this happen so often? Senior leaders do enjoy many advantages: They're well-compensated, have a great deal of autonomy, and often feel a strong sense of purpose. But such roles also come with significant downsides. Senior leaders are the subject of intense scrutiny, receive little developmental feedback, and are rarely viewed empathetically by others. [1] So despite the many benefits of these roles, feelings of stress, fatigue and isolation can cause senior leaders to entertain thoughts of leaving.

If you're a senior leader and this resonates with you, what can you do about it? My work with clients in this area involves what we might call "extending your personal runway": Taking steps that will enable you to remain in the role long enough to engineer a desirable transition, rather than feeling obligated to make a suboptimal move. (Most of my clients are CEOs, and there are some factors that apply specifically to that role, but many of the issues I address here are relevant for anyone in a leadership position.)

 

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Get Support

I'm biased, of course, but consider working with an executive coach. This need not be "career coaching," which involves helping you source and obtain a new role, should you choose to pursue one. It may be useful simply to have a trusted thought partner who understands the complexities of your role while remaining independent from the company. [2]

A personal coach can play a special role as a dedicated professional, but they're just one potential member of your "coaching team." There are undoubtedly other people already in your life or within reach who can also serve as sources of support, but you have to identify them--and understand the limits on the support they can provide. Family members and friends may be eager to help, but they may not fully grasp the challenges you face--and your need to talk about these challenges may exhaust their capacity to be present. In addition, cultivate relationships with peers--not just friends, but other senior leaders in similar roles. [3] The key in all of these relationships is letting the other party know what you need--people are often quick to jump in with advice, when you may just want to unburden yourself to an empathetic listener. [4]

A sometimes overlooked source of support is a truly outstanding executive assistant. If you don't have one, why not? As I've noted before, "a CEO who's spending time on tasks that could be delegated to an EA isn't being 'lean and scrappy'--they're stubbornly clinging to an outdated job description and hurting the business as a result." [5] Or perhaps you have a shared EA, or an "EA/office manager" for whom the role is merely a stepping stone to something better. In my experience when a leader finally finds a "professional EA" who views the role as a career path, the leader is not only much more effective, they're also far less stressed.

Finally, assess your finances. You needn't be motivated primarily by money to feel a heightened sense of opportunity cost as your tenure in a role lengthens. Perhaps your base compensation hasn't kept pace with the market, or a lack of liquidity is imposing constraints that are no longer palatable, or you're fully vested with no refresh on the calendar. We fail to obtain the financial support we need for many different reasons, but a common dilemma is the expectation that the necessary conversations will be uncomfortable or fraught. This may be true, but as I've noted before, "If it feels risky to say, saying it will carry a short-term cost [and] NOT saying it will carry a long-term cost." [6] I'm not suggesting that all you need to do is ask--you may face substantial resistance. But we don't get what we deserve--we get what we negotiate. [7] And a reluctance to thoroughly explore the possibilities will almost certainly shorten your personal runway.

 

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Redefine Your Role

Your current responsibilities were determined at a particular point in your company's evolution and in your own growth and development as a leader. Some of the stress and fatigue you feel today are likely the result of gaps that have emerged over time among A) the tasks you do because they're "your job," B) the tasks you do that create the most value, and C) the tasks you find most fulfilling. While you undoubtedly face constraints in re-defining your role, all too often I see leaders laboring under outdated job descriptions that should be updated--and this is as true of CEOs as it is of anyone else. It's important to distinguish between the value you create through specific tasks and the extent to which those tasks are personally fulfilling:

This is obviously an oversimplified version of reality, and there are probably few, if any, neat and tidy divisions among your duties that correlate perfectly with this model--but it may still highlight some useful distinctions. As I've noted before, "I define 'work' as a vocation--a calling or a personal mission that provides us with an intrinsic sense of meaning and purpose. A 'job,' in contrast, is a set of responsibilities we fulfill in exchange for various forms of compensation. We get paid to do the job, but the work is its own reward." [8]

If you're like many senior leaders these categories overlap substantially but have drifted apart in recent months or years, which may be one of the primary reasons you're considering the length of your runway. Almost certainly there are a set of tasks that you find unfulfilling but through which you generate so much value that it's unrealistic to consider delegating or abandoning them, at least at present. You may conclude that this is The Job, i.e. the reason you get paid. But what's in the top-right quadrant? What responsibilities are both value-generating and fulfilling? And what might enable you to operate here as much as possible?

At the same time, there are almost certainly a set of responsibilities are are neither value-generating nor personally fulfilling, although perhaps they were in the past. A cynic might say, "This is The Job--this is why I get paid." But in my experience that's not true for senior leaders who enjoy a degree of control and agency in their work (although it may well be for people in other roles in dysfunctional bureaucracies.) Instead, senior leaders typically find themselves performing these tasks either because they have an outdated idea of the value being created, or they've placed insufficient value on their time and attention. Once these factors are recalculated, it can be surprisingly easy to...stop.

To help assess your current role in light of this model, here are three questions to ask (which I've discussed at greater length previously [9]):

1. What are you uniquely qualified to do?

This is likely a function of the talent you can attract and retain at present. You probably own certain responsibilities because no one better qualified is available, and efforts to delegate these tasks will have to wait. But consider whether you're holding on to these responsibilities because of an outdated belief that certain tasks are too important to delegate, a counterproductive need to maintain personal oversight, or difficulties in building scalable systems. Your unique qualifications may be less expansive than you think.

2. What are you obligated to do?

All leadership roles come with some responsibilities that can't be delegated, no matter how talented your team or successful the company. But while these tasks may well be yours as long as you hold the role, it's often the case that as the company grows and your role becomes more prominent, the stakes will be higher, requiring more thorough preparation and a greater amount of your attention. Consider how narrowing the focus of your role might allow you to perform these duties more effectively and efficiently.

3. What are you free to do?

I'm not suggesting that you should prioritize personal preferences over organizational imperatives--this is not an excuse to hold on to responsibilities that should be delegated. But in addition to the work that you're uniquely qualified to do, and the work that you're obligated to do, consider what work you're free to do, what tasks might lift your spirits and make the job more intrinsically rewarding. Some of this will be value-generating, while some will simply be play--and although we may need to impose limits on the amount of play in our professional lives, a little goes a long way toward making stressful and fatiguing experiences more sustainable.

 

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Slow Down

Whatever steps you can take to extend your personal runway, it's also worthwhile to examine the forces that are causing you to accelerate toward its endpoint. It may be possible to slow down and lengthen your tenure in the process. Here are three factors that may be propelling you forward:

1. Inadequate Boundaries

If you're like many of my clients, you're not necessarily seeking "work/life balance," but at the same time, you're disinclined to devote the same amount of time and energy to work as you did in the past. This can result from many factors: Increasingly complex personal obligations, such as the needs of children, aging parents, a spouse or partner; or diminished personal well-being, ranging from the typical ailments of middle age to serious health issues. Or you may simply feel discontented or bored--the passion that once fueled your appetite for work has waned.

But while balance may be unattainable or even undesirable, you will almost certainly benefit from better boundaries. A healthy boundary isn't an impermeable barrier, but, like a cell membrane, it keeps the right things in the right places in the right proportions, while altering its permeability to adjust to changing conditions. As I've noted before, "Temporal boundaries designate certain times exclusively for family, friends, exercise, and other non-work pursuits... Physical boundaries ensure that we get out of our offices and workplaces at regular intervals and create actual distance between us and our work (which includes not only the office itself but also all our professional tools and artifacts–laptops, tablets, phones, papers, everything) [and] cognitive boundaries help us resist the temptation to think about work and focus our attention on the people or activity at hand." [10]

2. A Sense of Urgency

In this context it's important to distinguish between importance and urgency, which I define as follows:

Important activities are truly meaningful and fulfilling--to you, to the people who matter to you, to your organization, or to some cause that you believe in. They’re not necessarily time-dependent; they can be accomplished almost anytime, and if they go undone for a short stretch no one may even notice.

Urgent activities have a deadline attached to them that matters to someone—although not necessarily to you. They are time-dependent, at least in someone’s mind, and if they go undone that someone is going to be unhappy. They’re not necessarily meaningful or fulfilling, and accomplishing them may not actually make a significant difference. [11]

The dilemma, of course, is that "the time and attention we would otherwise devote to Important But Not Urgent activities is often sacrificed to address Unimportant But Urgent matters. The challenge is that we’re the only ones who care about the former, while the latter have many advocates." [12] You'll accelerate when you allow others' sense of urgency to dictate your priorities--and you'll slow down when you commit to such important-but-never-urgent activities as time with loved ones, a mindfulness routine, a workout, a good night's sleep.

3. Your Competitive Drive

Humans evolved to compare ourselves to others, to have a keen sense of our relative status, and to compete for resources and opportunities. We can't turn off these drives, nor would we want to. As with so many other confounding aspects of our psychology, they're features for the species that as individuals we often experience as bugs. [13] Even if you don't feel overtly competitive, if you're like many of my clients your sense of disenchantment with your current role is related to a perception that you're behind in some way--lagging after peers, classmates, siblings, or (most importantly) your own expectations.

The feeling of being behind inevitably provokes an urge to accelerate--you must catch up with whoever (or whatever) you're trailing--which will shorten your runway, potentially leading you to make suboptimal choices. There's no simple solution, but a starting point is considering the possibility that your competitive drive and the threat of loss that exacerbates it are, at least in part, illusions. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that you should accept your current situation or stop striving to improve it.

But a counterpart to our proclivity for social comparison is the process of hedonic adaptation: We readily accommodate and soon take for granted changes in our circumstances. [14] The things we think will make us happy rarely make us as happy as we think they will, and the happiness they bring never lasts as long as we want it to. This is not a reason to stop trying to change your life for the better, but it may allow you to view your present condition with more equanimity, and to pursue your hopes for the future without rushing to get there.

 

This is a companion piece to Not Every End Is a Goal (On Midlife Malaise).

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Footnotes

[1] Watch That Next Step (CEO Problems)

[2] How to Find (and Choose) a Coach

[3] The Friendship of Wolves

[4] What Do You Need Right Now? (Advice, Listening, A Hug?)

[5] Three Stages of Executive Assistance

[6] Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

[7] Negotiating with Your Own Side

[8] The Work and The Job

[9] Three Buckets (On CEO Job Descriptions)

[10] Happy Workaholics Need Boundaries, Not Balance

[11] Importance vs. Urgency

[12] Ibid.

[13] The Trap of Competition

[14] Stop Trying to Be "Good Enough" By "Getting Better"

Photo by Victor.

Pain Is Mandatory. Suffering Is Optional.

At last you cry out in anguish: "Why me?" God answers: "Why not?"

You can so stand it.

After all, it's only pain.

What makes it seem unbearable is your mistaken belief that it can be cured.

~Sheldon Kopp, 1979 [1]

Legal cases often involve damages for "pain and suffering" to compensate people for the wrongs they've been subjected to. But I think it's useful to distinguish between the two terms and regard them as different aspects of the human experience. In this context, pain is mandatory. It isn't just on the menu--it comes with every order, and we can't send it back. But suffering is optional. It's something we choose, although often without realizing it.

Pain is mandatory for a number of reasons. First, it's needed to keep us safe. We identify sources of physical and psychological pain very early in life, and (usually) we learn to avoid them. There are people with genetic mutations who don't feel pain, and such a condition might sound enviable until we learn that these people constantly break bones and burn themselves without even realizing it. [2] An inability to feel pain is incredibly dangerous, and we can readily grasp why the capacity for pain conferred an evolutionary advantage on our distant ancestors.

Pain results from our nature as organic beings who are prone to physical frailty. We tend to forget this aspect of life until it becomes impossible to ignore it. If we're fortunate, our experience with painful injuries and health issues are delayed, but a hidden cost of that good fortune is the mistaken belief that we've somehow been spared this fate. (My friend and colleague Joe Dunn has observed that in our 40s we slowly become "old young people," and in our 50s we're suddenly "young old people," and that's a perfect description of my last decade.)

Pain is a by-product of the inadequacy we feel when we compare ourselves to others. Neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman has suggested that whenever we're not preoccupied with a specific task, our brains rely upon a "default network" whose focus is "social cognition [which entails] thinking about other people, oneself, and the relationship of oneself to other people." [3] As a result, psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky has noted that "it's impossible not to compare ourselves with others... Social comparisons arise naturally, automatically, and effortlessly." [4]

And pain springs from the fact that we're finite creatures with infinite psychological appetites. Anthropologist and philosopher Ernest Becker observed that "the essence of man is really his paradoxical nature, the fact that he is half animal and half symbolic," and our symbolic selves are essentially bottomless pits of need. [5] Our craving for attention, our acquisitive impulses, even our sexual drive are all manifestations of a futile but determined effort to transcend mortality, and are thus reliable sources of pain when we inevitably fall short of our yearnings and aspirations. [6]

In contrast, suffering is a consequence of how we view our pain. Suffering can magnify pain, making it worse and more intense. And suffering can extend pain, transforming it from an aspect of life that comes and goes into a continuous state, or even a way of being. But we can be deliberate and intentional in deciding how to view our pain, and in that sense suffering is optional.

We choose to suffer when we fail to learn from experience and identify sources of pain that might be avoided in the future. This can be a particular challenge for extreme optimists, who may seek to suppress negative emotions associated with setbacks. [7] But at various times we're all subject to a tendency to discount or ignore these feelings, and yet in so doing we condemn ourselves to repeat the same mistakes. Instead, we can accept and learn from our failures.

We choose to suffer when we strive for permanence in a fleeting and transient existence. There's an apt line of scripture inscribed upon the Buland Darwaza, an immense gateway near Agra, India, built in 1575 by the Mughal emperor Akbar: "The world is a bridge. Cross it, but build no house upon it. The world endures for but an hour. Spend it in devotion. The rest is unseen." [8] Whatever our spiritual beliefs, we can acknowledge that our efforts in this existence are impermanent, and rather than resist the inescapable, we can embrace mortality.

We choose to suffer when we cling to control and refuse to accept limits on our agency. We can take substantial steps to influence many aspects of experience, including our subjective sense of well-being, but those efforts will not protect us from pain. [9] As the Buddhist author Pema Chödrön has noted, "Sooner or later, we're going to have an experience that we can't control: our house is going to burn down, someone we love is going to die, we're going to find out we have cancer, a brick is going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head." [10] Rather than fruitlessly insisting on total control, we can seek out pockets of agency.

And we choose to suffer when we imagine that we should be free from pain. It's understandable that we might wish to eliminate the sources of pain noted above, but we should also consider the gifts that accompany the pain they bequeath us. Physical pain teaches us to stay safe and free from harm. The pain of mortality is what makes this existence meaningful. The pain of falling short in our comparison with others and in our own self-assessment keeps us moving forward, a state that is undoubtedly a "feature" for the species, even if we as individuals experience it as a "bug." The idea that we might enjoy these gifts painlessly is a form of magical thinking.

I'm not suggesting that we should cease efforts to alleviate pain, our own or that of others. But as psychotherapist Sheldon Kopp was keenly aware, our "mistaken belief that it can be cured" is what makes pain unbearable.

 

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Footnotes

[1] What Took You So Long? (Sheldon Kopp and Claire Flanders, 1979)

• On page 60 of Joan Tollifson's 2019 memoir, Death: The End of Self-Improvement, she attributes a similar line to her teacher Charlotte Joko Beck, but fails to provide a source. This seems worth noting (if only to recommend Tollifson's deeply moving and very funny book), but I'll continue to credit Kopp, as the line is certainly consistent with his overall philosophy.

[2] A family in Italy doesn't feel pain because of a gene mutation. (Jessica Hamzelou, NewScientist, 2017)

[3] Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, page 18 (Matthew Lieberman, 2013)

[4] The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does, pages 131-132 (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2014)

[5] The Denial of Death, page 26 (Ernest Becker, 1974)

[6] Sex, Fame, Money and Death

[7] The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them (Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley, 2012)

[8] For more on the Buland Darwaza, see the British Library's Online Gallery and this Guardian review of Tarif Khalidi's The Muslim Jesus by William Dalyremple (2001). The latter two sources use the same translation found on Wikipedia, but I prefer the slightly different version quoted by historian Michael Woods in Episode 2 of his epic series Legacy: The Origins of Civilization (2002).

[9] Attitude and Behavior

[10] When Things Fall Apart, page 70 (Pema Chödrön, 1997)

 

For Further Reading

The Ruling Out of Possibilities (On Failure)

Not Every End Is a Goal (On Midlife Malaise)

Pockets of Agency

The Traps We Set for Ourselves

 

Photo by Matthew Rutledge.

Relating to Our Inner Critics

A theme in my practice is helping a client renegotiate their relationship with their inner critic, and I've developed a set of principles that guide our work together on this topic:

• Our inner critic has our best interests at heart.
• And until now they've served us well.
• But our life has changed since they first emerged, as have we.
• So their guidance is increasingly unhelpful.
• But efforts to banish them will generate fierce resistance.
• The solution: Renegotiate the relationship.

What do I mean by all this? And how can we put these ideas into practice?

Our inner critic has our best interests at heart.

We often apply disapproving labels to our inner critic such as "gremlin" or "saboteur." There can certainly be value to this approach, not only because it allows us to establish a sense of distance from this aspect of ourselves and view it more objectively, but also because it helps us envision and personify our inner critic, which is helpful in engaging it in a dialogue. But a problem with these labels is that they presume an antagonistic relationship, and in my experience the opposite is far more common: Our inner critic desperately wants us to succeed. It may be hopelessly misguided or tragically inept, but rather than deliberately seeking to undermine us, it has our best interests at heart. By assuming good intentions, we can engage our inner critic far more productively.

And until now they've served us well.

The paradox is that until our inner critic became an obstacle to be overcome, it served a useful purpose in our lives. It motivated us to raise our aspirations and do better work. It encouraged us to shake off complacency and try harder. It protected us from embarrassing oversights and fateful missteps. This was often unpleasant, of course--inner critics aren't known for their subtlety or tact. They probably used harsh language or employed crude tactics, such as reminding us of the cost of failure and stoking our fears and anxieties. But in the initial stages of our life and career when our inner critic first emerged, this may have been the only way we knew how to motivate ourselves.

But our life has changed since they first emerged, as have we.

And yet we're no longer at the outset of our life and career, nor are we the same person we once were. The irony is that our inner critic may have played a significant role in this evolution. By motivating, encouraging and protecting us in an earlier era, our inner critic enabled us to tackle new challenges and alter our circumstances, and in the process we became a different person. We're more capable and thus more confident. We feel a greater sense of agency and control. We're less fearful and anxious. Our inner critic may even go silent for while--until, suddenly, they come roaring back to life. If we've grown used to their absence, this can be profoundly confusing and alienating: Who is this critical voice in my head, and why are they so negative?

So their guidance is increasingly unhelpful.

This is the root of the problem: Inner critics aren't particularly flexible or responsive to change. They emerged in response to a particular set of challenges at a particular time in our life, and they developed their motivational repertoire in that context. But even as they enabled our own evolution, their limited perspective has prevented them from evolving in turn. This is entirely predictable--our inner critic is, of course, an aspect of our own personality that we differentiated from our conscious self at a time of need to serve a specific purpose. Having done so, we relied upon our inner critic to play their part in the pursuit of our own growth and development. We valued the results they helped to bring about, but we didn't like how they made us feel, and so we kept our distance whenever possible, leading them to stagnate.

But efforts to banish them will generate fierce resistance.

The dilemma that although our inner critic works for us, they have lifetime job security. Any attempts to fire them will be futile and counter-productive. This is a function of our inner critic's lack of sophistication, noted above. They can't grasp that we've evolved to the point where their guidance is no longer needed, and thus they interpret efforts to dislodge them as signs that we're about to make a grave mistake. Red alert! they shriek in protest. The more we try to ignore them, the more agitated they become. This is usually the point at which a client raises the issue with me.

The solution: Renegotiate the relationship.

The starting point in this process is exploring the points above. They're not all equally valid for everyone, of course--we're dealing in metaphors and archetypes here. But I've found most of them resonate with people in one way or another, which normalizes their struggle and allows them to relax. And once we've acknowledged that our inner critic has our best interests at heart and has served us well, but their approach is increasingly out-of-date and unhelpful, we can stop fighting our inner critic and begin collaborating with them. Rather than demonize our inner critic for its shortcomings, we can adopt a more compassionate stance toward them--which, of course, means being more compassionate toward ourselves. Our inner critic is doing the best it can--as are we.

Most inner critics emerge as authority figures--when personifying our inner critic, many of us see or hear a parent, a teacher, an athletic coach, an early manager. So it's understandable that in a previous era our inner critic took charge, and we deferred to them. They claimed the seat at the head of the table, and we assumed that they deserved it. But today that arrangement no longer meets our needs. Rather than try to exclude them altogether, we can invite them to take their rightful place. Rather than feel hectored and oppressed by them, we can appreciate their efforts on our behalf. Rather than seek to ignore them, we can engage them on our own terms. Someday we may even be able to thank them for their service and convince them to take some well-deserved time off.

 

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For Further Reading

Doing the Work (Reflection, Journaling, Dialogue)

The Traps We Set for Ourselves

Why Change Is Hard

The Obstacle Is The Way

Stop Trying to Be "Good Enough" by "Getting Better"

 

Photo by Craig Oppenheimer.

The Traps We Set for Ourselves

Sometimes we're prevented from achieving our goals by factors beyond our control--the performance of a competitor, or the misdeeds of an adversary, or simply random chance and bad luck. But all too often we pay insufficient attention to the obstacles of our own making--the traps we set for ourselves. In my work as a coach to senior leaders (and in my own life), these traps tend to fall into three categories:

Magical Thinking

Then close your eyes, and tap your heels together three times. And think to yourself: There's no place like home!

~Glinda, the Good Witch of the North [1]

There's a positive correlation between optimism and effective leadership, in part because the optimistic leader has a contagious effect on others, rendering success more likely. [2] And yet there's a point at which unbridled confidence is merely a wish, and optimism becomes magical thinking, which can be particularly dangerous for a leader. Neuroscientist Richard Davidson notes that the risks of excessive optimism include resistance to negative data and failure to learn from experience. [3]

What can we do? Cultivate a tolerance for cognitive dissonance. This is the mental state evoked when we're confronted with ideas or data that appear to be inconsistent, which most people find so unpleasant that they modify their beliefs (and their behavior) or simply ignore certain data in order to restore conceptual consistency. When we engage in magical thinking, what we're really doing is soothing the discomfort evoked by cognitive dissonance, wishing away the risks and concerns that are inconsistent with our preferred outcomes. We don't have to become pessimists, but we need to anticipate cognitive dissonance and take steps to become more comfortable with discomfort. [4]

Self-Delusions

There is nothing...to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution.

~Harry Frankfurt  [5]

We like to think that we know ourselves well, and yet our view of ourselves is as subject to bias and distortion as our perspective on any other subject--perhaps even more so, given the host of blind spots that impede our view. This includes unrealistic self-regard and unrealistic self-criticism, and both are equally problematic. Leaders with an inflated estimation of their own abilities are staples of tragic stories in history, literature, and the annals of management practice. But in my experience as a coach the vainglorious hero who takes a fall is actually less common than the person whose perceived limitations become real ones, unable to get out of their own way. [6]

What can we do? First, adopt a fundamental attitude toward ourselves: View ourselves as a work-in-progress, open to learning and change, and seek to maintain a growth mindset in which our capabilities are plastic and evolving. [7] Then hold regular "conversations with ourselves" by making a consistent commitment to turn our abstract reflections into more concrete thoughts through some form of writing, and engaging others in coaching conversations in order to gain some critical distance on our subjective experience. [8] Finally, actively solicit feedback from people we trust to minimize those blind spots--and note that in my experience positive feedback is actually more stressful than negative feedback, but it is just as valuable in raising our self-awareness. [9]

What Ought to Be

You want it to be one way, but it’s the other way.

~Marlo Stanfield [10]

We hold a set of beliefs about the way the world works, and these mental models have a profound impact on our experience of the world. [11] A subset of these beliefs involve the way the world is supposed to work, the way things "ought to be," and these ideas can be tremendously durable and resistant to modification. This makes sense, up to a point. We rely heavily on our mental models to determine cause-and-effect, predict likely outcomes, and modify our behavior accordingly, and they usually serve us well for these purposes. It would be a waste of effort to revisit them constantly. But in some circumstances we remain attached to our mental model of "what ought to be" even in the face of extensive evidence that it's wrong or out of date.

What can we do? See our mental models as just that--simplified versions of reality that enable us to navigate the world which must be updated on a regular basis. When the territory doesn't resemble the map, we have to modify the map. [12] This often involves some form of "double-loop learning," in which we look beyond the results we're achieving (or failing to achieve) and exploring the assumptions and beliefs that underpin our current goals and strategies. [13] We're also well-served by enhancing our capacity for emotion regulation. [14] When our model of "what ought to be" is contradicted by reality, we often experience a surge of righteous indignation, and even when such passion motivates us to remake reality to conform with our ideals, we need to manage those feelings to enlist others in the cause and avoid burnout. Finally, we can take an entirely different stance toward these perceived impediments--they may be there not to block us, but to teach us, and it may be a lesson that could be learned in no other manner. Sometimes, the obstacle IS the way. [15]

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Wizard of Oz (directed by Victor Fleming, produced by Mervyn LeRoy, based on the book by L. Frank Baum, portrayed by Billie Burke, Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, 1939)

[2] See Dispositional Affect and Leadership Effectiveness: A Comparison of Self-Esteem, Optimism, and Efficacy (Martin Chemers, Carl Watson, and Stephen May, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2000), and Impact of Leadership Style and Emotion on Subordinate Performance (Janet McColl-Kennedy and Ronald Anderson, The Leadership Quarterly, 2002).

[3] The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them (Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley, 2012)

[4] The Cognitive Dissonance of the CEO

[5] On Bullshit, page 67 (Harry Frankfurt, 2005. First published in The Raritan Quarterly Review, 1986.)

[6] Three More Horsemen (How We Self-Sabotage)

[7] Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, 2014) 

[8] Conversations with Ourselves

[9] Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful

[10] Refugees, The Wire, Season Four (Written by Dennis Lehane, portrayed by Jamie Hector, HBO, 2006)

• Here's a brief clip that's worth watching.

[11] Corn Mazes and Mental Models

[12] The Map Is Not the Territory

[13] Building Blocks (A Tactical Approach to Change)

[14] The Tyranny of Feelings

[15] The Obstacle Is The Way

 

Photo by insight pest.

Why You Can't Stop Thinking About Something

A common challenge faced by my clients is an inability to stop thinking about something that's obsessing them:

• An intractable problem in the business.
• An interaction that went badly in some way.
• A difficult relationship with a colleague or in their personal life.
• Or simply the existential risks that accompany leadership in uncertain times.

While this is an oversimplication, there are three factors that explain much about why we can't simply "turn off" unwanted thoughts:

Emotions Are Attention Magnets

As I've written before, psychologist Victor Johnston describes emotions as "discriminant hedonic amplifiers," meaning that they boost various signals in our mental landscape, drawing our attention toward certain issues and events and away from others. In other words, emotions are attention magnets. [1,2] This is a "feature" that can feel like a "bug." [3] Unlike the slow, methodical process of logical reasoning, in which the narrow window of consciousness allows us to focus on a relatively small number of objects, emotions allow us to process vast amounts of data from multiple sources at once, rapidly alerting us to potential opportunities and threats. (To be clear, emotions do not work in opposition to logical reasoning--rather, they're essential inputs into the process. [4])

As a species we obviously benefit from this capability--that's the feature. The late psychologist Daniel Wegner noted that it's essential for emotions to be able to interrupt conscious thought and capture our attention:

It is clear that emotion should not be very susceptible to willful control. If we could turn off all our emotions, feel no pain, never laugh, not be gripped by fear or despair, stop being excited, and so on, we could easily end up dead... It is good, in other words, that when we feel an emotional state, our normal purposes and interests succumb to an influence beyond our control. The priority of emotions over will is important for our survival because it allows our plans to be interrupted by the immediate pressures of reality. [5]

The dilemma is that emotions are a "quick and dirty signal," in the words of neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux. [6] Just because we have an emotional response to a situation doesn't mean that it's actually worth our attention. Compounding the problem is the fact that negative emotions have a much stronger and long-lasting impact than positive ones. [7] My clients never complain about being unable to stop thinking about all the good things in their lives. So while we benefit as a species, the magnetic pull of negative emotions can make it profoundly difficult for us as individuals to put them out of mind when it would be helpful to do so--that's the bug.

"Meta-Thoughts" Contain "Object Thoughts"

Wegner used the terms "meta-thoughts" and "object thoughts" to describe two different types of thinking:

The term cognition refers to thinking; meta-cognition is the term for thoughts about thinking. Loosely speaking, the process of thinking is something people do to things inside their head. This definition highlights the most obvious quality of thought--its character of having an object. We think about things, and the curious quality of thought is that it requires something to be about... Meta-cognition occurs when thought takes itself as an object. [8]

An attempt to stop thinking about something that's obsessing us is a meta-thought (the effort to stop thinking) about an object thought (the thing that's obsessing us). We're constantly engaged in the process of directing our attention toward (and away from) various possible objects, as we weigh the costs and benefits of attending to (and ignoring) each object:

All meta-cognition can be viewed as the relative emphasis or de-emphasis of object-level thoughts... The result is...a relative concentration on certain object-level thoughts or a relative suppression of certain object-level thoughts... At the meta-cognitive level, the mind registers what is okay, or not okay, at the object level. Meta-cognitions are preferences for our minds, wishes about what we might think. [9]

The challenge, Wegner notes, is that a meta-thought directing us to stop thinking about a particular object thought contains the problematic object thought itself:

When meta-cognitions do step in, they must lumber into the light of the conscious window to try to change the view. As it turns out, this is a key part of their inability to succeed in the immediate suppression of a thought... Our difficult time with thought suppression comes when, in this sequence of conscious thoughts, we get the idea to suppress a current thought. The suppression meta-thought ("I'd rather not think of a white bear") is here, but the thought ("white bear") is here, too. As long as we hold the meta-thought in the conscious window, the thought will be there... We cannot split the thought from the meta-thought, even though this is the very purpose of the meta-thought. [10]

Mental Control Is Taxing

Any effort to direct our thinking is a form of "mental control," and all forms of mental control involve what psychologists refer to as "System 2" thinking, a term coined by Keith Stanovich and Richard West [11] and later popularized by Daniel Kahneman. "System 1" thinking, in Kahneman's description, "operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control." In contrast, System 2 thinking,

...allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration. [12]

But System 2 processing is a finite mental capability--we cannot concentrate or direct our attention indefinitely--and so we've evolved a set of mechanisms to ensure that we preserve this precious resource for those situations that truly require it. We have an "attention budget," and, as Kahneman notes, "If you try to go beyond your budget, you will fail." [13] We can experience "ego depletion," in which efforts at self-control and restraint (including, but not limited to, mental control) are perceived as fatiguing, eventually resulting in suboptimal decision-making. [14]

And we follow "the law of least effort," seeking to expend as little mental energy as possible, taking cognitive shortcuts to arrive at imperfect but serviceable answers to the questions we face. [15] As a consequence of these dynamics we typically experience efforts at mental control as taxing and even unpleasant, which often causes us to give up--at which point our attention returns to the magnetic objects of our obsession.

So what can we do when we're unable to stop thinking about something that's obsessing us? There's no simple answer, of course--we won't overcome two million years of evolutionary psychology, nor would we want to even if it were possible. But there are some helpful steps we can take:

• Dedicate time for "bounded worry." Research suggests that allowing ourselves to fully explore our concerns for a set period of time allows us to minimize our worries during the rest of the day. [16]
• Cultivate our capacity for emotion regulation. We can't control our feelings, but we can influence them.
• Commit to a consistent mindfulness practice. Meditation in particular can enhance our capacity for mental control--although note that it should be regard as a workout in attention management, not a break from stress.
• Engage in healthy distractions. We can't extinguish unwanted "object thoughts," because they're smuggled in by our "meta-thoughts"--but we can substitute alternatives that capture our attention.
• And, as always, write about it and talk about it with people we trust. (And possibly consider working with a coach.)

 

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Footnotes

[1] To Stay Focused, Manage Your Emotions

[2] Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotions, page 156 (Victor Johnston, 1999)

[3] "It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature" Trite--or Just Right? (Nicholas Carr, Wired, 2018)

[4] Antonio Damasio on Emotion and Reason

[5] White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts: Suppression, Obsession, and the Psychology of Mental Control, page 123 (Daniel Wegner, 2nd edition, 1994)

[6] The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life, page 163 (Joseph LeDoux, 1998)

[7] Bad Is Stronger Than Good (Roy Bauermeister, Catrin Finkenauer, Ellen Bratslavsky, and Kathleen D. Vohs, Review of General Psychology, 2001)

[8] Wegner, pages 43-44.

[9] Ibid, page 49.

[10] Ibid, pages 55-56.

[11] Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate? (Keith Stanovich and Richard West, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Volume 23, Issue 5, October 2000)

• Stanovich and others have gone on to point out shortcomings in the System 1/System 2 framework, while affirming its utility, and it is certainly sufficient for the purposes of this discussion. For more, see Dual-Process Theories of Cognitive Processing: Advancing the Debate (Jonathan Evans and Keith Stanovich, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2013)

[12] Thinking, Fast and Slow, pages 20-21 (Daniel Kahneman, 2013)

[13] Ibid, page 23.

[14] Ibid, pages 41-42.

• As I've noted before, early research on ego depletion suggested that varying levels of glucose in the bloodstream played a significant role in the process, but this conclusion has not been supported by more recent studies, and the underlying neurological mechanisms are still being explored.

[15] Ibid, pages 35-40, page 99.

[16] Cited by health journalist Lea Winerman in her report on a presentation by Wegner at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association: Suppressing the "white bears" (Lea Winerman, Monitor on Psychology, Volume 43, No. 9, October 2011)

 

For Further Reading

Attention Surplus Disorder (Anxiety and Distraction)

Attitude and Behavior

White Bears and Car Crashes (Thinking About Thinking)

The Tyranny of Feelings

Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People)

A Better Information Diet

The Value of Journal Writing

Talking About Feelings

The Art of Self-Coaching: Attention (Stanford GSB Class of 2016 Reunion)

 

Photo by apol-photography.

CONNECTIONS: Meaningful Virtual Conversations

Co-created with Agnes Le and Terra Winston. Image by Mohamed Hassan.

Agnes, Terra and I were MBA students together at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a few months ago we were asked to design a program that would help our classmates connect virtually during our 20th reunion, which is taking place this year. A number of them found it useful, so we decided to share this edited version more broadly.

OVERVIEW

Below is a structured agenda to help anyone host a virtual gathering of 6 people for 90 minutes. Virtual groups can easily lose a sense of intimacy, so we recommend limiting these groups to 6 people, including the host, and the agenda below is designed to accommodate a group of this size. We feel that 90 minutes will allow sufficient time for a meaningful conversation while fitting into peoples' busy schedules. In addition to the agenda you'll find two appendices: a set of technical tips for an improved virtual experience and a welcome email template.

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EVENT AGENDA AND TIPS FOR HOSTS

Step 1: Warming Up (10 mins)

Step 2: Getting to Know You (30 mins)

Step 3: A Deeper Dive (40 mins)

Step 4: Closing Down (10 mins)

Step 5: Afterwards (Optional)

Preliminary Notes

• Introductions: As you'll see below in the welcome email template, if members of the group don't already know each other we encourage people to make initial introductions by sharing some basic information via email prior to the event. This begins the process of creating a sense of connection, while allowing you to start the virtual event by diving into the agenda. (This will also allow you to follow up with anyone who fails to respond in order to confirm their participation.)
• Timekeeping: While these events shouldn't feel like overly structured business meetings, there's value in using a timer to manage the agenda and stay on schedule. The first two exercises are intended to get everyone involved and create a sense of connection and intimacy while leaving sufficient time for a meaningful open discussion. Keeping track of time will also ensure that the event ends when scheduled so that all group members can participate in the closing together. People shouldn't feel abruptly cut off by the timer, but it should serve as a signal to conclude their remarks quickly.

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Step 1: Warming Up (10 mins)

Purpose: Help everyone join in the conversation and start building energy.

Tips for Hosts

• This should feel spontaneous and fast-paced, so it's not necessary to share the questions with participants in advance--simply choose 3 questions that you find engaging, or invent your own.
• Some participants may need a visual cue so you might want to share the 3 questions on the screen.
• You can simply "go around the circle" to get everyone participating quickly--in a virtual setting this may require you to determine who goes next.
• Use a timer to let people know when their 90 seconds is up and to stay on schedule.

Three Questions

1. The host shares all 3 questions at the beginning of the exercise. Again, this may include a visual cue.
2. Each person has 90 seconds to answer all 3 questions.
3. Below are some suggested questions, but feel free to invent your own:

• What did you want to be when you were growing up?
• Who would play you in the movie of your life?
• Who’s one of your role models?
• What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
• What’s one thing you’re grateful for?
• What’s one thing you miss right now?
• What’s your superpower?
• What’s a gift you can share with this group?
• What’s your least-favorite nickname?
• What’s your favorite food?
• Where’s the first place you’ll travel post-pandemic?
• What’s the last book you read?
• What’s the last movie you saw in a theater?
• What’s one thing you do to take care of yourself?
• Why were you interested in participating in this group?
• When were you really happy (or excited or sad or scared)?

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Step 2: Getting to Know You (30 mins)

Purpose: Learn more about each other, build safety and trust, and have the host model vulnerability and timeliness.

Tips for Hosts

• The warm-up exercise above is intended to be spontaneous, but both of the options here in Step 2 are more effective when participants can reflect on the questions in advance. Choose one of the options here and share the relevant question/s with the group in your welcome email.
• These exercises can stir up a range of thoughts and feelings, which is why we recommend spending some time in discussion after concluding the responses.
• Allow participants to volunteer to speak when they're ready, rather than "going around the circle" or determining who will go next. This allows people to feel more agency in the process, which can influence what they choose to share.
• Again, use a timer to let people know when their time is up and to stay on schedule.
• You should go first to model timeliness and a degree of candor and vulnerability. The goal is to be sufficiently candid to make it a more meaningful dialogue, but not so much as to be overwhelming for anyone.

Option A: The Most Important Year of My Life.

1. Each person has 3 minutes to answer this question: What was the most important year of my life?
2. Note that the question is NOT: What was the BEST year of my life? It's an important distinction.
3. After each person has finished, take a moment to acknowledge them and express appreciation for their story, but don't do an extensive debrief or ask further questions at this point.
4. Take 10 minutes after the last person has finished to discuss the exercise. If necessary, you can initiate the discussion with a few questions: What was that like? How do you feel as a result? What questions are you left with?

Option B: Memories, Pride, Work

• The group will answer each of these questions in sequence (i.e. everyone answers Question One, then everyone answers Question Two, and then everyone answers Question Three).

1. Question One: What’s a meaningful memory of mine?
2. Question Two: As I look back over recent years, what am I proud of?
3. Question Three: As I look ahead to the future, what am I working on?
4. Each person has 1 minute to answer each question.
5. Take 10 minutes after the last person has concluded to discuss the exercise. If necessary, you can initiate the discussion with a few questions: What was that like? How do you feel as a result? What questions are you left with?

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Step 3: A Deeper Dive (40 mins)

Purpose: Create space for a more open-ended conversation.

Tips for Hosts

• Choose a topic from the options below (or invent your own) and introduce the topic and related questions to the group in your welcome email so they have time to reflect.
• Unlike the structured exercises above, the questions below are merely suggestions to help the group get started. The goal isn’t to answer each question in a rigid or time-limited way, and the group should feel free to follow their interests and intuition.
• If your video platform offers virtual breakout rooms, you can consider using them to begin this activity, dividing the group into 3 pairs or 2 trios. If so, be sure to familiarize yourself with the breakout room logistics, and have the pairs/trios spend no more than 10 minutes in the breakout rooms to allow sufficient time for a full-group discussion.
• If you use breakout rooms, an option to initiate the full-group discussion after returning everyone to the main room is to ask everyone to respond to the question, "What did you learn in your pair/trio?"
• Watch the clock during the full-group discussion to allow time for a closing activity.

Topic A: Meaning and Purpose

• What provides me with a sense of meaning and purpose today?
• What surprises me about this?
• How has this changed in recent years?
• How might it continue to change in the future?

Topic B: Pandemic Life

• What challenges am I facing as a result of the pandemic?
• How am I coping with these challenges?
• What am I learning about myself in the process?
• How is the pandemic affecting my expectations for the future?

Topic C: Hopes, Dreams and Fears

• What are my hopes, dreams and fears today?
• How do they differ from my hopes, dreams and fears of the past?
• What hopes and dreams have I accomplished? What fears have I vanquished?
• What hopes and dreams have I abandoned? What fears have grown worse?

Or invent your own topic and set of questions...

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Step 4: Closing Down (10 mins)

Purpose: Allow all participants to bring the event to an end together.

Tips for Hosts

• You can choose one of the options below or invent an alternative, but it’s important to hold some form of organized closing in which all members participate.
• It's less fulfilling for the group if the event runs long and one or more members have to leave before or during the closing--this is one reason why staying on time throughout the previous steps is important.

Option A: Unstructured

1. Each person simply says whatever they need to say to feel finished. Depending on the amount of time remaining, the host may want to set a time limit.
2. If time is very short, each person can say just one word to close the conversation. (This is viable in the absence of an alternative, but the host should try to manage time to ensure that more time is available.)
3. If there’s slightly more time, each person can say whatever they need to say to feel finished, as long as they can say it in a single breath.

Option B: What did you learn?

• Each person answers this question. Again, depending on the amount of time remaining, the host may want to set a time limit.

Option C: What will you remember about this experience?

• Each person answers this question. Again, depending on the amount of time remaining, the host may want to set a time limit.

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Step 5: Afterwards (Optional)

Purpose: Express thanks and create opportunities to stay connected.

You may want to send a thank you note to the group, which can serve as an invitation to stay connected in a number of different ways. Questions you can pose to your group members include:

• Is there someone you’d like to thank or express appreciation for, either one-on-one or in a message to the group?
• Is there anything you’d like to offer to the group or to any individuals?
• Do you have any requests you’d like to make of the group or of any individuals?

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APPENDIX 1: TECHNICAL TIPS

(This information is also included in the welcome email template from the host to the participants.)

Here are a few guidelines to make a virtual conversation as meaningful as possible:

• Privacy: Find a private space in which you won't be interrupted or distracted. If it's possible that other people with you might overhear this virtual conversation, wear headphones to insure the privacy of the other participants.
• Tools: In a virtual conversation the quality of the tools we use and the surrounding environment can have a big impact on the quality of the conversation. Ensure that you’ll have uninterrupted access to a broadband connection if at all possible. Consider using an outboard camera and microphone for better image and sound quality. Pay particular attention to your lighting and your background.
• Presence: Virtual conversations can be meaningful only to the extent that everyone participating is fully present and actively involved. Turn off any devices, services or alarms that might distract you. Multi-tasking will be obvious to the other participants and will diminish the sense of safety and trust in the group. Strive to be fully present and make it as easy as possible to do so.
• Confidentiality: Virtual conversations have the potential to be more meaningful when participants’ trust in the group’s confidentiality. This should be acknowledged at the outset by the host, and again, if you are sharing space with others wear headphones.

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APPENDIX 2: WELCOME EMAIL TEMPLATE AND COMMUNICATIONS

Welcome Email Template

FROM: Host
TO: Group Participants
SUBJECT: Our Connections event on [date]

Hi there,

I’m excited that we’ll be getting together for our Connections virtual conversation.

Logistics

• [Date]
• [Time and time zone]
• [Meeting link, ID and password]

Introduce Yourself

Let’s get to know each other before the event by sharing a little background via email. Here’s a little about me... Please share something about yourself in response to this message (and be sure to "Reply All.")

Hopes and Expectations

We’ll meet for 90 minutes, and I’ll manage our agenda to be sure we finish on time. My hope for our time together is to have a meaningful conversation, reflect on our lives, and connect with each other in the process. If you have additional hopes or expectations, please share them with the rest of the group.

Agenda and Preparation

Step 1: Warming Up (10 mins): No preparation necessary--we’ll jump in with some questions that I’ll provide.

Step 2: Getting to Know You (30 mins): This involves a question (or questions) I’d like you to reflect on:

• (Option A, one question) What was the most important year of my life? And note that "most important" doesn’t necessarily mean “best.” You’ll have 3 minutes to tell the group about this year.
• (Option B, three questions) What’s a meaningful memory of mine? As I look back over recent years, what am I proud of? As I look ahead to the future, what am I working on? You’ll have one minute per question to respond.

Step 3: A Deeper Dive (40 mins): This involves a more far-reaching conversation, and I’d like you to consider the following: (Share the topic you’ve selected and the related questions.)

Step 4: Closing Down (10 mins): No preparation necessary, but be sure to clear your calendar so you won’t have to leave early.

Technical Tips

Here are a few recommendations that will make our conversation as meaningful as possible:

• Privacy: Find a private space in which you won’t be interrupted or distracted. If it’s possible that other people with you might overhear this virtual conversation, wear headphones to insure the privacy of the other participants.
• Tools: In a virtual conversation, the quality of the tools we use and the surrounding environment can have a big impact on the quality of the conversation. Ensure that you’ll have uninterrupted access to a broadband connection if at all possible. Consider using an outboard camera and microphone for better image and sound quality. Pay particular attention to your lighting and your background.
• Presence: Virtual conversations can be meaningful only to the extent that everyone participating is fully present and actively involved. Turn off any devices, services or alarms that might distract you. Multi-tasking will be obvious to the other participants and will diminish the sense of safety and trust in the group. Strive to be fully present and make it as easy as possible to do so.
• Confidentiality: Virtual conversations have the potential to be more meaningful when participants’ trust in the group’s confidentiality. This should be acknowledged at the outset by the host, and again, if you are sharing space with others wear headphones.

Don’t hesitate to reach out before the event if you have any questions. I look forward to connecting with you soon!

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Communications

Note that this initial email to your participants serves several purposes:

• It conveys necessary logistical information.
• It provides an agenda and reflection questions so that people will feel oriented and better prepared to participate.
• It allows you and the participants to exchange some information about yourselves so that you can begin the event with something more provocative and energizing than basic introductions.
• And it begins the process of creating a sense of connection, which makes it more likely that people will show up prepared to participate fully.

If a member of your group doesn't respond to your email within a reasonable period, reach out to them directly to confirm that they received it and intend to participate.